


Hunt The Heavens.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-21
Updated: 2010-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:30:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beware what has been hidden. Beware the Pandorica. Beware the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunt The Heavens.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a quote from East Coker by T. S. Eliot.
> 
> **Continuity/Canon:** through Doctor Who 5.12 The Pandorica Opens.
> 
> **Warnings:** This is one of those "if I have to ask myself if I should warn, I probably should" times. Dark themes, fairy tale-inspired child harm themes.

The door closes and he cannot move. But there is no fear; the Doctor knows this. He knows this far too well. This is not his first prison. This is not his first nightmare. This is not his first war.

He is older than he cares to remember. He knows how to survive.

He reaches out the way he did at Arcadia, at the fall of the Third Fleet, at so many battles in so many times in so many wars. Before his eyes, it solidifies.

"I missed you, too," it says. "Are you ready for me now?"

"I need you," the Doctor says, words heavy in his throat.

The Dream wraps itself around him. "All you had to do was admit it," it chides him. "All you ever had to do was admit it."

He closes his eyes which he hadn't opened and he enters his own mind, with his nightmares and his dreams as his guide.

 

\---

 

He remembers: he is sitting on the floor of a great academy, his legs tucked under him. It is late and their rescue will not come until morning. His traveling companion turns to him and starts the old ghost story:

"Once, when Amelia Pond was seven years old, she was removed from time and space. She never returned."

 

\---

 

He hears of the Pandorica as a myth and a legend. It is buried in space and time, it is older than the Time Lords. It was written on a cliff face at the beginning of recorded history: Beware what has been hidden. Beware the Pandorica. Beware the end.

The Dream says to the Doctor: cheer up; when you get out of here, you're going to have to clean that up. It'll take years.

 

\---

 

He sees every thing in every time, but he does not always see it immediately. He closes his eyes and he sees: a million impossible things.

 

\---

 

He sees Amelia Pond. A girl taken from her own time and her own place, taken to England, placed in a house with too many rooms, meant to shelter a family that has ceased to be, because it was required for her.

He sees Amy, the woman who grew from the girl who never survived to see eight.

He sees pockmarks in history; he sees what should never have been. He sees an escaped prisoner and psychic paper that tells him to think, to remember.

It says: _Gallifrey._

He is sending a warning to himself. Through time and space, he is sending himself a warning. Remember Gallifrey. Remember what has been lost.

Some endings never grew from beginnings. Some beginnings never end.

There is no history, there is only now.

 

\---

 

Before his eyes, suspended before him, he sees a woman out of time, taken there by someone who didn't care to hide her too well, against the possibility that he wouldn't be able to find her in his past.

The Dream asks him the question as old as time: did he save her from destiny or did he cause it? How far, how deep is our paradox? The question writes itself through the Doctor's brain. Has he saved her, will he save her, did he save her already? The Dream rocks back and forth on its heels, but this is no question, no question at all.

The Doctor knows: ghost stories are never history. At best, they are warnings; at worst, misinformation. He does not trust them.

He remembers: Amelia Pond came from a forgotten fourth-rate planet and touched the Pandorica and it closed.

He remembers: the innocent child sacrificed to imprison a monster.

He remembers: he never thought this story was any good at all.

 

\---

 

He sees: he has left himself warnings in time and space.

"You knew it would come to this," the Dream whispers in his ear. "You knew."

The Doctor can't deny it. He shrugs.

Together, they press forward.

 

\---

 

He remembers: Rory son of William. He knows that name. The Dream guides him to it, and the Doctor remembers: a raging battle, a mortal wound, a man dying in his arms, _tell my wife, tell my Amy_.

He will plant the name in space and time, but it will not be for Amelia Pond, it will be for Amy. Amelia Pond will never know, because Amelia Pond will die at age seven and three-quarters, trapped in the Pandorica with the murderer of a thousand star systems, the conqueror of a thousand fleets. She will sit on the floor of the greatest prison ever created, awaiting her destiny. She will starve to death if she does not suffocate first. She holds great power over the monster and it means her death.

Amelia Pond dies. She will always die. But Amy Pond was snatched from the prison when it reopened. A girl, not yet eight, walked in. A different girl, not yet eight, walked out. It has not been written yet, but it will be. The Doctor will write it.

He does not need the solace of knowing he has escaped this; he already knows this. The question is only when, and time is only ever an illusion, it is only ever a state of mind. In this dream state, it will be no time at all. In this dream state, it has already been an eternity. They are forever the same and time does not pass for him here; he is suspended in body and mind. It may be hours or centuries or millennia until he is freed, but he will never notice. For the Doctor, it is the time between two heartbeats and no longer.

He knows: there are repeating patterns in space and time, and Amelia will never know this. He must leave it only for Amy. He must warn himself. Beware Rory. Beware the walking dead.

 

\---

 

In the ghost stories he heard as a child, Amelia Pond haunts all prisons. She is the spirit in the clattering chains, she is the whisper in the bars and ropes.

Beware the Pandorica. Beware what can never be freed. Beware the end of it all.

"If you see Amelia Pond," the Dream says in the voice of an old, long forgotten friend, "run. If you see Amelia Pond, run. She will rip you to the bone."

The Doctor once heard: Amelia Pond tears you in half before she kills you, the left half to feed the monster, the right half to create her toys.

The Doctor once heard: Amelia Pond steals imprisoned children and takes them away with her to be her playmates. They live forever in the Pandorica. They live forever, out of space and time.

The Doctor once heard: Amelia Pond was the lost child of a tyrant who burnt the cosmos to cinder to find her again. In exchange for his freedom, she was returned to him. She stays willingly. But sometimes she walks the stars, dancing on the solar winds, searching for her mother.

The Doctor wonders what stories he will tell of this, later.

Perhaps he will start them: When Amelia Pond was seven years old, she was stolen from space and time and Scotland.

Perhaps he will say: The destruction of the Pandorica began the moment Amelia Pond first entered England.

He will never say the truth: the Pandorica will always open. Amelia Pond will always die to close it. But there are ways to change what has already been written.

He will change them.

 

\---

 

He will not say: I created the cracks in the universe when I took Amelia Pond out of her timeline and left her safely in England.

He will not say: The child of Scotland died with the Pandorica, but I gave her to England. I gave her life. Her only loss was her name and she will live on without it.

The Dream sits next to him, its legs crossed at the ankle. It says: there are consequences that come of changing fixed events in history.

"I know."

But he can dance among the fixed events, he knows the twists and turns and he knows how to cheat. He can never save Amelia Pond. But he will snatch Amy from the jaws of this paradox. And he will never regret it, no matter what the price. Amelia Pond will gain her life and lose her name. He cannot change the event, but he can change everything else.

He sees the fixed event and knows: he will change it.

 

\---

 

The Doctor sees: a million impossible things.

 

\---

 

He cannot move, but it does not matter: he is held perfectly still in his own mind, suspended in a cocoon of his own thoughts. He exists, perfectly and serenely still. His mind is racing, but his body does not move. His body and his mind are one and the Doctor dreams.

And silently, oh so silently, the Doctor waits.


End file.
